So it’s me

I think I’m slightly weird.

Well, maybe weird is too…broad.

I am strangely affected by small things that I think actually mean something.

For instance, I have things that I say. You know, my own little catchphrases. If I hear of something that deserves celebration, you could probably hear the phrase “I was totally like yay!” come out of my mouth. Or “Hallelujah, happy day!” Both of these make sense to me. “Ta da!” and “Whoohoo!” fall in the mix there somewhere as well.

I don’t like spiders. No, that’s not the weird part. Who likes spiders? Unless they’re creepy and kooky themselves, most people abhor those 8-legged terrorizers. I hate ‘em, I smash ‘em, and I leave their dead carcasses out as a warning to other spiders. I imagine a spider coming upon one of their smooshed kin and thinking, “Whoa! I better stay away from this spider killing place!”

Weird.

I also think fry ends are deadly. And terribly crunchy. Just the really pointy ones, though. Square ends are perfectly acceptable. They get a non-lethal rating from me.

I have a hard time putting any nail polish on my hands that has color in it. I feel like I’m suffocating my nails. Color…it’s just so…heavy. But I do like a nice French manicure. Only the tips are really covered and can breathe because they are past the end of my finger.

Odd.

I think lots of thoughts so much on a daily basis that I have a hard time sleeping at night. I’m going on Day17 of where I can’t get to sleep until almost 1 a.m. and I’m up and bright-eyed and no, not really bushy-tailed, by 5:50 a.m. Lots of thoughts. Lots.

I also really like licorice.

But I think that’s pretty okay.

Caden said, "Smile, Mom! It makes you look beautiful!" Awww, that kid...

Dress up – for me and for him

This Halloween, things went a bit differently. There was no walking around going door to door trick-or-treating. Instead, Caden and I got to spend the evening out together with my Dad and Allison attending the U of U football game. I felt a little sad that we didn’t have the usual experience, but I asked Caden straight out if he wanted to go to the game or trick-or-treating. “Go to the game,” he replied with little hesitation. He did pick up some candy at our ward’s Trunk-or-Treat last Thursday, and some goodies before the game Saturday. So I didn’t feel like he missed out on too much.

It was obvious that this year I was preoccupied with other matters beyond Halloween as Caden didn’t even get his costume until four days before the big day. Of course, he did change his mind several times on what he wanted to be. First it was going to be one of the Three Amigos with his friends Bridger and Karson. Then he thought about Frankenstein -f or about 20 minutes. Finally he settled on Black Shadow Ninja. Well, that’s what he officially called it.

I had an idea on how I would’ve loved to make his costume but completely ran out of time and energy this year to do it. So thank you, Amazon, for having a costume that was $15 and could ship overnight for $4 thanks to my Amazon Prime membership.

Caden loved this costume, he even wore it to the U game as it was a Blackout Game – everyone dressed in a sea of  black and the players sporting black uniforms (which I rather like). I did spot a few great costumes, such as a giant chicken who danced during every time out, Edna from Hairspray (big burly guy dressed in a pink sequin dress? YES, you WILL stand out in a sea of black), and Waldo who was quite easy to spot considering his red and white striped shirt popped against a black background.

 

Sisters - we look so much alike...

 

We had a great time and Caden woke up the next morning with quite the hoarse voice from all of his screaming and yelling.

Having just spent time dressing up Caden, I can tell you what I’d most like to dress up in for myself right now. This quirky cardigan from Anthropologie:

I love look, the stitching, the buttons, the quasi-creative-head-in-the-clouds feel, and I love the name – the Wayward Cardigan. Perhaps because I feel so wayward at the moment. However, like most things of Anthro style, I do not love the price. Perhaps when it goes on sale in a couple of months I can tempt myself with getting it. Or not. Because I may not be employed to justify the expense.

Work–not love–is a battlefield

I won a big battle today, but I had to swallow my pride to do it. There is nothing more difficult than knowing you did the right thing and having to apologize for it because somebody gets their nose in a joint for not being involved in the decision-making process. This happens a lot in my line of work. And boy, the stress of these situations just drives me absolutely insane.

I took out my frustration on Monday evening when I went to play my volleyball game. My team kept asking me where all of this aggression was coming from as I was attacking the ball and trying to split its seams open on the hardwood.

“Wow,” commented one girl. “Are you mad at somebody or something? You are taking it to that volleyball!”

I just smiled and replied, “Oh yeah. I am picturing a certain person’s face on the ball! It’s helping resolve some…uh, unresolved anger and frustration issues.”

I was on fire–physically and emotionally. Serves, sets, digs, and kills; all of it just flowed like hot lava…which I guess doesn’t really flow but ooze. But you get the gist.

I’m also in the throes of applying for positions right and left. No big interviews yet but I think I found a job I would really like. My manager just sent it to me and the title? “Director of Extraordinary Experiences”. THAT’S the type of job I want!! I’m not exactly sure of the details, but the title did grab my attention…

In other Angie news, I’ve started working out with a personal trainer. I got tired of my same old-same old routine of going to the gym, running, doing some weights, running some more, stretching, and not feeling like I really worked myself out. My trainer, Jane, is a skinny little thing with rock solid  muscle. She is so dang adorable that I almost didn’t go with her because I thought she would be too nice. Ha! That little spitfire beats the holy living crap out of me in our workouts. I’ve had muscles buried within muscles that I didn’t even know existed that are being exhausted and toned.

After my first workout with Jane, I couldn’t lift my right arm for two days. After my second workout with Jane, I could hardly walk because my hamstrings were so tender. Yeah, she’s beating me up and I’m loving it.

Beyond the physical abuse I’m inflicting willingly and joyfully upon myself, I am finding it hard to believe that October is nearly over. November is right here and it means a couple of things: my time at my job doth rapidly approacheth zero hour, it’s getting colder, my big dinner at Sundance is nigh upon me, and Caden’s sports are almost at an end. Between football and soccer, it’s been a busy fall. Well, it’s always busy with that kid and sports. He can’t get enough!

He was named Defensive Player of the Game for his first football game, got the Hit Stick for 2 other games (that’s when you have the BIGGEST hit out on the field), and has received Save of the Game, Assist of the Game, and Goal of the Game multiple times for his soccer skills. Yeah, I think he’s pretty talented. Truth is, it’s so much fun watching him play at this age. These kids he plays with are just a great group of kids and it’s exciting and engaging to watch. There is one boy on his football team that is incredible. That kid? He’s going to be a big player someday, I bet. High school coaches are already coming to our games to scout him out. At TEN years old. WOW.

Tomorrow I get to host a chili cookoff on my site complete with witches fingers breadsticks courtesy of Great Harvest Bread Company. October is national chili month – get your chili on!

More Italy and Greece, please

The days go by so slowly lately and I am struggling through one of those life transitions that send tsunami-like waves crashing over you. My office is so sad and lonely with a handful of us actually coming into the building to work each day. Nothing new on the job front and my head manager out of Oregon is really putting the pressure back on to get me to move. Still feel like I should stay…but having a job is very important, too.

I am still responsible for keeping the “pep” infused in my work environment and frankly I’m pooped from providing all the pep. But I still do it. Someone’s got to, right? I do find the strangest things are cracking me up lately and perhaps that silliness comes from the fact that I really don’t know where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing in three months time. For example, I am hosting a dinner up at Sundance as a kind of farewell gathering of those of us left in Utah (and hanging on to the end) and I asked for RSVP’s. One guy with the last name of Robison wrote he would be attending and forgot to send his wife’s name. I wrote in “Mrs.” and started singing “Here’s to you, Mrs. Robison…” in my head. And subsequently proceeded to giggle incessantly. A bit punchy, I am.

I’ve been cleaning buckets and oodles of files/folders/images/music off of my work laptop that was personal to me and in the process, have been reliving many great moments of the past 4 years of my life. Most recently, my Italian/Greek jaunt. I look at those pictures and wish I could go back there every day. Minus the whole scooter incident of course. I have so many pictures to share – so I think I will! It makes me happy – it might just make you ooh and ahh too.

(I think the reason why I keep going back to Italy and Greece right now is because I am desperate for a change in my situation at hand; and daydreaming about the Cinque Terre or Santorini really gets me out of the doldrums)

Evening in Oia

Cinque Terre

My Greek Knee

The continuation of my lovely Greek Tragedy

I consider myself to be a pretty brave person. Except when it comes to small enclosed spaces and needles. Everything else – I’m game. As I sat in the back of the wee little Euro car on my way to a tiny island hospital in the middle of the Greek isles this past June, I felt relatively calm. I felt like I was in control of my emotions –  my fear, my anxiety – and mentally? Steel nails. I knew that this whole adventure would mean shots and needles and more glimpses of my blood, but I psyched myself up for the situation. As we (me and Emmy) arrived at the hospital, this wave of reinforced mental bravery and courage I had started to build felt strong and sure – and I walked/limped through the front doors with my jaw firmly set.

As soon as I crossed the threshold of that deceptively charming exterior, I immediately started to lose my bravado. This hospital was the scariest thing since the Bates Motel. Spiders crawling on the floor, rusted chairs in the “lobby”, and lighting that cast a hellish fluorescent glow.

I should make mention of a small incident that occurred right before I arrived in my little Santorini cab at the doorstep of Beelzebub’s Palace. Right after my accident and before I got in the little cab to come to the hospital, somebody had called the local “911″ and an ambulance had been sent to pick me up at the base of the Ancient Thira road. The thought of what the ride could potentially cost kept me and the other girls from deciding to hop right in. I didn’t want to end up with some unholy Greek ambulance bill of $3000 Euros. My refusal to accept their services did not come across well to the ambulance men. In fact, they were none too pleased with my non-compliance in being their patient to transport and were down right rude and mean. They kept handing me papers to sign as a refusal for help and I was so bewildered because 1) I don’t speak Greek and 2) I had no idea what I was signing. They left in a huff and I know they were calling us “Stupid Americans” in Greek. Aaaand probably some other unpleasant names, too.

So guess who I ran into the second I stepped foot inside the hospital? The ambulance Nazis! And right next to them was the doctor who would be attending to me shortly.

“Why did you refuse help?” she said in her heavily accented English, eyes glowering beneath bushy Greek brows. The ambulance Nazis shook their heads disapprovingly.

“Look, I didn’t know who called these guys. We didn’t call them and I don’t know who did. So that’s why I didn’t need to use them…”

“Well, okay then. You will be in that room over there.” She pointed down a dank hallway which I assumed led to something that would resemble a clean hospital room. But you know what they say when you assume something…

Emmy followed my limping frame around the corner and within two seconds, I knew I was in the wrong place. Instead of my own little room, we came into an open area with creaking cots where an older woman lay in a bed, a rusted IV pole by her side, blood dripping from the placement of the needle in her arm, and her eyes rolled back in her head. My eyes popped open wide. PANIC started to set in. The bravado? Pfffftt!! Gone! Kaput! Terror began to grip my heart. The thought that immediately came to my mind was, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t want to DIE in this place!’ Uncontrollable sobs just came rolling out and poor Emmy was left to console me. I honestly was scared to death for my life – and it seemed I was staring death in the face…and she was an old Greek lady whose tongue hung out of her mouth.

A big, burly Greek nurse quickly found me and directed me to the chamber I was to be tortured in.

Why did I take pictures of this place? Are you kidding? In case I did end up dead, I wanted documented proof for my family  that the “environment” was not quite conducive to healing. Or cleanliness. Or feeling like you weren’t going to lose your life just to get a few stitches.

Olfa, the Greek nurse the size of an NFL linebacker, ushered me onto the creaky bed, the blue plastic tarp crackling with every small movement of my body. It wasn’t the cleanest tarp I had ever been on either. Brown streaks of iodine laced it’s sharply static surface. To me in my hysterical moment, it looked like dried blood. I could hardly talk because fear had taken over, my body was racked with the shakes, and tears just kept streaming down my face. Olfa just merrily chattered along in Greek and bustled about the room grabbing one of 500 open iodine bottles and a few open gauze pads.

The doctor walked into the room and this is how the formal introduction began. “Hel-lo, my name ess Dok-tor [insert unpronounceable Greek name here - I just referred to her as Dr. X]. I half been resi-dent for three weeks on Santorini. What happened to yure knee?”

Oh, great. Not only do I have to deal with this scary throwback hospital from the ’50’s, I have a BRAND NEW doctor who doesn’t have YEARS of experience in closing wounds. Crap.

I explained to her the whole scooter incident story, my almost flying off the side of a hilltop, and how I came to be present at her humble place of establishment. She just shook her head and said, “Scoot-ers. So many times, people geet hurt. You lucky that you did-unt geet hurt worrse.”

She unwrapped my tightly bandaged knee and proceeded to pull apart the wound even more [side note: why do doctors have to poke and prod before you get numb? I'm already in pain - why do you have to make it worse?]. I gasped. Olfa just clucked her tongue at me. “Oh yesss, it looks like you need seex stitch-us.”

Six? Six? Was she out of her freaking mind??? This was a gaping wound almost  two inches long and she’s thinking SIX??? Try doubling that, sweetheart.  I mean, The Guy just the other day had his lip split open and needed six stitches for a wound almost one  inch in length.

Dr. X looked at Emmy, who had been standing by my bedside this whole time, and said, “You need to leeef. You can not be in hahr.” So they forced her out of the room and even made her move away from looking in the door. I’m assuming it’s because they didn’t want witnesses to what was about to happen. Emmy, being the resourceful gal she is, went and stole a cell phone from some random guy to try calling her mom. When she told me the story later, of just grabbing a phone from some man sitting in the hallway, I started to laugh. Partly because she was brazen enough to do it and partly because she saw what the guy was surfing on his phone for – ewwwww.

Dr. X and Olfa started chatting in rapid-fire Greek  and this is what I think they said:

Dr X: Do you think she knows I haven’t ever stitched up a wound like this? I don’t even know where to begin.

Olfa: Nah. She is clueless! She is American.

Dr. X: What should I do to cleanse the wound before we close it? It looks pretty deep…maybe if I poke it here and there it won’t be so bad.

Olfa: Iodine. Always the solution. Let’s just dump an entire bottle onto her leg and pray for the best.

Dr. X: Do you think we can knock her out so she will remember nothing?

Olfa: No! Pain is part of the process. She will appreciate more of what we do for her if she can feel every little thing.

Nothing makes you feel more out of place, unsure, and completely lost than being put into a medical situation where you understand NOTHING of what they are saying. It is terrifying to not be able to understand the conversation – and I grew up with doctors! I knew what questions I wanted to ask and and I couldn’t do it.

As soon as they finished their little Greek convo, Olfa took a large bottle and without warning just started to squirt massive amounts of iodine onto my knee. I thought my leg was going to catch on fire, it stung so bad. I thought my eyes would burst out of my sockets, the soprano notes I have never been able to hit would be surpassed, and that the asterisk-laced profanity that filled my mind might eventually leak out my open, gasping mouth.

After gasping for air a couple of times, gritting my teeth and grasping the blue tarp that surrounded me, I managed to eek out a “Are you going to numb me? You know? Shots? No feeling? No pain?” I made the little hand gesture of shooting a needle so she would get my point. But the look that I got back from Dr. X did not provide me much comfort. It was more along the lines of, “What is that funny thing she is doing with her thumb and forefinger…”

Let me start by saying this: needles SUCK. In today’s modern society, you would think that it might be common knowledge to actually numb a person before proceeding to ram a curved stitching needle through their skin several times to close a gash. You would think that, wouldn’t you? AND you might also think that it is pretty much general practice to use GLOVES and other sanitized items when performing such minor surgery, correct? HA! Then you have never been privilege to the Greek socialized medicine system.

There was no numbing. She gave me one shot of something but who knows what and it didn’t do much of anything at all. I think she was just practicing giving a shot to a wound. Then came the first stitch. I think I would’ve preferred them cutting off my leg at that moment. Dr. X was no stitching savant; she yanked and pulled and at one point had to turn the needle over to Olfa because she couldn’t get it through my skin. Olfa, being the kind, sensitive soul that she was, jammed it so hard through my skin to get to the other side, it made me see 10 years into my future.

With every gasp, I clamped my hands over my mouth and tried not to cry, and kept thinking, ‘this will be over soon, this will be over soon, please, please, PLEASE Heavenly Father, don’t let me catch some crazy staph infection and lose my knee because they don’t use gloves, their cleaning methods are questionable, and the gauze they are padding my knee with looks like it has been open since 1973′.

At one point, I even balled up my fist and tried sticking it in my mouth for a distraction.

Amazingly, the un-anesthetized stitching finally came to an end and my sight began to return. They wrapped my knee up, but not without squeezing another bottle of iodine on my leg first, and Dr. X said, “You must come bahk with-een two days to get wound cleeened again – kay?” You’ve got to be joking. You think I’m coming back to this hell hole?

“You also need anti-bio-tickz and a pro-bio-ticz for the place down (she gestured downward) as it geets upset with theeese medicines. You get teta-noos shot recently?”

“Tetanus? Um, not recently.”

“More than 10 years?”

“Yes, yes, I’m pretty sure it was more than 10 years ago.”

“Okay. You need to also get medicine from pharmacy and bring bahk to geet yure shot.”

“You don’t have the medicine here? I need to go get it?”

“Yes, hospitals don’t have medicine like that. You go to pharmacy, pay, bring it bahk.”

Well, geez, that sure sounds efficient. How does a hospital not have tetanus medicine?

As I sat up ever so gingerly, my arms shaking from the trauma of what just transpired, I could feel my knee throbbing beneath the bandages. The funny thing was they didn’t even look at my other leg and how beautifully black and blue it was from ankle to inner thigh and how my left ankle was completely swollen. No, not a real thorough assessment of the situation if you ask me. The funniest part of all? Not once did they ever take my name. Not once did they ever ask if I had any allergies, if I was hurt in any other part of my body other than my gashed open knee. When I showed them my insurance card, they both waved me off like, “Get that peasant card out of here; it no good”.

“So, do I pay now? Or how do I pay for this?” I asked Dr. X. She looked at me in wide-eyed amazement.

“Pay? You no pay. It’s free. Greek system.”

No kidding. I think for the service I got, that price is just about right there, lady. Considering that when I get back to the States I will have to have a regular doctor open my knee up again and re-stitch it and probably tell me I’m lucky I really didn’t lose my leg to some massive infection. Yeah, free sums up the service and level of care I received.

Emmy was finally allowed back in to help me off the table. She took one look at my leg and asked the two women, “Aren’t you going to clean up the blood on her leg?” I looked down my right leg and it was completely covered in dried blood. Olfa kind of shrugged her shoulders in a kind of “Why not?” gesture and proceeded to clean a leg that quite honestly should have been done as part of the whole process of patient care. Fascinating, really, that it came more as an after thought.

Even though the “care” was free, the meds were not cheap whatsoever. I picked up the three prescriptions I was given, and headed back to the hospital to give them the tetanus juice to inject in me somewhere fun. Still the strangest thing, if you ask me, to have to go get the medicine and take it back to the hospital so they can inject you with something they should have in stock. But maybe that’s just my American greediness in expecting too much.

The Greeks have such a lovely bedside manner about them, including the sadistic nurse who had to give me the injection. As I am introducing myself and what I needed, she takes the bottle, fills the syringe, and with one fell swoop pops the needle BAM! right into my arm. At this point, nothing took me by surprise and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t get faint from a shot. That didn’t take away from the fact that it really, really hurt.

Once I opened up my other Greek meds, I realized I was in big trouble.  The instructions? They were Greek to me. If I had joined a sorority at the U of U, I might have been able to decipher a few things by looking at all the Greek letters of the alphabet. Instead, I had to go find an Australian pharmacist who told me how to take the meds, when to take them, and what meds might make me a little queasy. I actually ended up getting two more prescriptions (one for pain, one for nausea because of the pain and antibiotic medications) on my follow up visit with a new Nurse Ratchet who scrubbed my knee so hard (again, sans gloves) when cleaning it, I fainted dead away. Fresh stitches? Why you gotta scrub and scour my poor knee like that? And waking up to 5 screaming Greeks is no picnic either.

All in all, I ended up with 5 medications (which, by the way, all come in GLASS bottles; no plastic in Greece), a knee that I couldn’t bend for a month, an 11 hour plane flight from Athens to NYC which thankfully was half full (plenty of room to spread out), a 6 hour flight from JFK to SLC on an overbooked flight (with massive turbulence that caused the biggest vomiting episode I’ve ever seen on a flight; not me, just other people ALL around me), and a scar that people notice right away. “What kind of knee surgery did YOU have?”

Yep, that baby is the scar on my knee right now. You can SEE every little stitch that they made. When I had my doctor here in the good ole US of A unwrap and take a look at it, his comment was, “Wow, those are some BIG stitches! They only gave you six??” You betcha, doc. Imagine the whole experience sans local anesthesia. Lovely.

The truth is my knee still hurts – way down deep within the layers of my skin. It was a very deep gash and I know that serious healing will take time. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve started volleyball again and find myself falling on my knees from time to time when diving for a ball. It won’t stop me from participating, however.

As for my other leg, my left ankle is still completely numb and swollen in a 4 inch radius. No change in 3 1/2 months. Still numb. Still swollen. And some days it is very painful. Apparently there is some serious nerve damage that may require more drastic measures in the future should it not come back into the land of living ankle awareness.

So there you have it. The story from A to Knee. And the beat goes on.

A Greek Tragedy

I have finally come to the point where I can talk about my Greek “incident” without totally breaking down in tears. Yes, it took MONTHS to overcome the shock and aggravation of the situation, but now I feel uninhibited, free to talk without the Greek Mafia hunting me down to silence my complaints.

Okay, so maybe it’s not that dramatic. I’ve actually shared my lovely experience with several people now and all I can say is this: it makes for a really great story. It’s just a bummer that I will have a permanent reminder of this “adventure” on my knee for the rest of my life. But oh well. It could’ve been worse. A LOT worse. As in, my ability to post a story of this nature would have been prevented due to the untimely demise of my person. And I like my person. A whole heckuva lot. So whew! Dodged a mortal bullet there.

Santorini was the final stop on my Italian/Greek tour I did this past June. It’s a beautiful little island that is the quintessential Greek experience: gyros for only 2 Euro, pebbled beaches, perfect weather, and a landscape dotted with brilliant white buildings topped with Mediterranean Blue rooftops. It was lovely.

Since it was such a small island, we decided within hours of landing on Santorini that it would be a great idea to rent scooters for up close exploration and discovery. When I say “we”, I mean me, my little ex-sis-in-law Emmy and her two friends, Nicole and Brooke, that joined us from London. We hopped on our scooters, two to each machine, and took off around Kamari, the beach side area where we were located. Before long, we found a little winding road that said, “Ancient Thira”. As I was leading our group, I thought, ‘hmmm, that would be cool to go up to the top of this mountain and take a look’.

The site of Ancient Thira was at the crest of one of the small peaks on Santorini. And the road leading up to the ancient ruins was a precarious grouping of switchbacks…that you really couldn’t full appreciate until you were on the road. About halfway up the mountain, I had a feeling, you know, one of those ‘uh oh’ feelings that gives you a sense of foreboding? The steep corners of the switchbacks along with the added person on the back of my scooter were making me a little nervous. Not to mention the road wasn’t really a “road”; it was cobblestones.

A thought popped in my head when I got that feeling. It went something like this: ‘hmmm, maybe taking scooters up this steep mountainside might not be the best idea’. Famous last thoughts. The next switchback turn was steeper than the last and you had to give it gas as you turned the corner just to get it up over the steep switch before it flattened a little bit again. I came around the corner a little tight, gunned the gas, and promptly hit one of the protuding cobblestones. It threw off my balance and alignment so that within a matter of a split second, instead of heading UP the mountain, I was heading off the SIDE of the mountain. At full gassed up speed.

You know how people say that time seems to stand still when something bad is about to happen? I’ve been in car accidents and other situations and all I can say is that it’s amazing how something that occurs in 2.3 seconds can seem like an eternity as your brain processes the scene . It’s like still frames being unfolded by your brain as you come face to face with what will inevitably be shock to your system: Flip! Flip! Flip! Flip! I remember looking at the edge of the mountain, paralyzed with fear because I couldn’t find the brake to stop, and simultaneously thinking, “Oh my gosh, I can NOT kill this girl on the back of my bike! And please bike – STOP!!!!” And then we hit. A small curb. That saved us from going over the side of the mountain. Well, I should say that saved ME because Nicole, my quick-witted passenger, jumped off the back before serious impact.

BOOM! Head over heels I went flipping over the scooter. I felt a pain in my right knee and in my left leg as I landed on the side of the road and got pinned by the scooter as it continued to flip forward on top of me. As I lay there on my back, the scooter crushing my left leg and my right knee pulled towards me, I looked at the sky and thought, “What in the heck was that??? Holy smokes…did I break anything?”

Emmy and Brooke came rushing over towards the two of us in full panic, asking if we were all right. It was at that moment I heard a gasp and “Oh my gosh – look at her KNEE!!” Crap. I most certainly did NOT want to look at my knee because I hate blood. As in it makes me weak to see my own life juice leaving my body. I propped myself up on my elbows and looked anyway.

My right knee was split from my kneecap to the inside of my leg, a deep gash that also gave me a nice sweet glimpse into the corner of my actual kneecap. YUCK. Immediately, I started to not feel so good. When you have this chronic aversion to blood (which I have detailed on my blog a couple of times), your head and stomach start to do weird things immediately. And it’s an extremely uncomfortable feeling.

I knew within seconds of looking at my knee it was going to be needing some serious stitches to shut that torn up gap closed. Panic started to set in a little bit because my second biggest phobia is needles. Stitching requires needles. Although I think I would have tried some serious super glue as a nice non-needle-like alternative to bringing two pieces of my skin back together again.

Emmy and Brooke helped me over to the far side of the road where two people happened to just be chilling out by the bend in the switchback. Funny thing these Greeks: they witnessed this crazy accident and just sat there. It wasn’t until Emmy began gesticulating wildly and Brooke was asking quite pointedly for a First Aid kit that they decided to come alive and walk over to help me. Thankfully, they did have a First Aid kit and they began to wrap my knee because the blood trickling down my knee and covering my right foot was making me even more sick.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I told no one in particular and I started to shake a tiny bit as the shock from the injury really started to set in. My left leg was battered from my ankle all the way into my inner thigh and my right knee was entirely immobilized as I didn’t even want to try and bend it and create a bigger gash. The conversation that swirled about me focused on how to get me down to a hospital, did the island even have a hospital, do we call an ambulance, what happens  next. All I knew is that I wasn’t going back down the mountain on the scooter (which, by the way, had NO injuries to it whatsoever).

Suddenly, a little car came around the upper bend and stopped when it saw the ruckus by the side of the road. Out popped two elderly French couples who had smartly rented a SMART car and taken it up the mountain to view the ruins of Ancient Thira. I remember the taller of the two gentleman coming towards me and starting to ask me questions in French. I couldn’t respond too well at the moment because I was if I opened my mouth, something entirely too nasty for words would come out. I knew I was in the pre-stages of something happening to me if I moved to much.

Well, apparently the nice old Frenchmen offered to take me down the mountain in their car. Somebody asked me if I was okay to stand and walk towards their car. I don’t have any recollection of this at all. In fact, the last thing I remembered was sitting by the side of the road and just feeling absolutely and fantastically icky. But apparently I told someone I was okay to go, that I could make it to the car. Sigh…famous last words.

It’s a strange thing to faint. If you have never had the experience, let me tell you how it works (well, at least how it works for me). Before you lose consciousness, you feel like every molecule in your body is bursting inside you with rapid-fire motion, and it makes you unsettled and very uncomfortable. You can’t think clearly and your arms and legs start to get very weak. It feels like the very essence of life that fills every part of your body is being sucked back into the middle of your body, like some reverse vacuum effect. And when it all gathers in the middle, it’s lights out. And the molecules dancing around inside you? They feel like tiny little pricks against the inside of your skin. Ever tried to warm your cold hands by placing them under hot running water? That awful prickly sensation? That’s kind of what it feels like before you are out cold

Now, on the reverse side, waking up from a dead faint is a strangely relaxing thing. It’s like you were awake one minute and then you got sucked into a dead fog where absolutely nothing is there. It’s coming out of blackness, out of a pool of nothingness because you have no memory of how you came to be “asleep” and how long you were out. Everything slowly comes back into focus: your hearing, your vision, your memory, your body and how it’s positioned.

As I came to after fainting dead away as they tried to walk me to the car, I opened my eyes and to my right I saw Emmy and Brooke, their eyes popped open wide and seemingly trying to yell something to me. As I rolled my head to the left, I saw the kind Frenchman who was stroking the side of my head. My hearing was slowly coming back and as it did, I realized that Emmy and Brooke were yelling in my face for me to “wake up!”. They were saying a bunch of other things too, but the funny thing is that I couldn’t understand a single word of what they were saying. As I moved my head back to the Frenchman, his soothing voice chattered on in French – and I understood EVERY SINGLE WORD THAT HE SAID. And without even pausing to think, I just started to respond to him in French. Emmy and Brooke looked at each and I could hear them asking, “Does she know French???” They obviously thought I had hit my head pretty darn hard.

Later, as Emmy was recounting her experience with my fainting spell, she said she honestly thought I had died for a moment, that perhaps I had hit my head in the crash and now I was a goner. She attributed this to the fact that my face went a ghostly shade of white, my lips became bright purple, and my eyes rolled back in my head so that when she tried to pry them open, all she saw where the whites of my eyes. Poor Emmy, I scared her half to death!

Back to me speaking French. Oh, and did I mention that I could only understand things said to me in French? As Emmy and Brooke tried to talk, it all sounded like gibberish and I couldn’t make sense of it. Everything the old Frenchman spoke was as clear as running water. I slowly sat up and started talking to the man in French, explaining the situation and that I needed to get to a hospital and could he possibly take me? “Portez-moi a l’hopital dans votre voiture?” I asked.

Within a matter of minutes, I was assisted over to the car and very gently maneuvered myself into the back seat. I tell you what, when you are a tall girl of 5′10″ and you need to have space to stretch your leg out in a car and you are put inside a tiny SMART car, well, let’s just say that you are hating life.

But little did I know just how much fun was awaiting me as we made our way to the hospital…but I will have to make that Part Duh, as in “Duh, don’t use the Greek socialized medicine for all the money in the world!”

The creature from the Countertop Lagoon

I have a neurotic fish. It sits at the bottom of his bowl, swims in crazy zig-zag patterns when you approach the bowl, and if you stare at him long enough, he doesn’t open his mouth at all. How do I know that last part? Because I stared at him. For at least a full minute. He was doing the fishy thing, opening and closing his mouth several times, sitting on the bottom of his bowl (I’m thinking of putting a miniature plastic couch down there for him), and when I approached, he stopped moving his mouth and stared straight at me. Mouth shut. Eyes forward – well, as forward as a fish’s eyes can be. Nothing. Just sat and stared at each other.

His name? Hermie, because he’s a little hermit at the bottom of the bowl. His origin? My birthday gift from my little 9 year old son. Caden wanted to do some elaborate treasure hunt for me for my birthday so I would find my fish at the end of some long crazy string chase. But he couldn’t contain his excitement. So instead, when I got home the night before my birthday several days ago, Caden yells, “Shut your eyes, Mom!” “What? Why?”  ”Just do it! I have a surprise for you!”

I closed my eyes under Caden’s insistence, he told me to hold out my hands and count to three.

“Okay, one, two, three!” My eyes flew open and there in my palm was a bowl. With a little goldfish in it. Staring right back at me.

“Surprise! Happy Birthday! Are you surprised? I got you a goldfish! You have a pet!”

Yes, I most certainly did. And the LAST thing I thought he would surprise me with was a fish. He usually wants to buy me some sort of jewelry (his future wife will thank me for that some day I’m sure) because he says I “need a diamond ring like all the other moms”. He’s so cute, funny, and observant. Sometimes MUCH too observant. Darn smarty pants.

So there you have it. My best birthday gift was a fish that I’ve come to discover is a little neurotic. He’s perfect for me.

On a separate and totally unrelated topic, I just had to say that my heart goes out to the S family in my parents ward. They lost a son in a very tragic way and I grew up with him in the neighborhood.  J was a big loveable teddy bear type of guy and it’s hard to believe he won’t be around anymore. I just talked to him a couple of months ago, congratulated him on his marriage, asked about my insurance policy. Today at his funeral, my heart just broke for his wife and his family that I love so very much. All I can say is that if you’ve neglected telling someone that you love them, TELL them right away. Life is just too short here on earth. Thank heavens we have an eternal plan of happiness that provides hope and comfort.

Another 197 miles down

I am tired. So exhausted. Bags under the eyes. Tight legs. Sore stomach. In a bit of a haze. And I can hardly wait until next year to feel like this all over again.

Friday my team, The Chafe Busters, started off once again in the Hood to Coast relay and had 28 hours of non-stop fun and adventure. This year I was in Van 2 but still the first runner out to hit the road in my group. This made me runner #7 and my three assigned legs went something like this: Hard, Very Hard, Moderate. Or in other words, Ouch, Holy Mother of Cheese, Oh My Goodness.

My Van 2 mates and I met at the Ronler Acres campus in Hillsboro (they all work there) and headed out to grab some noodle-y Thai food before heading up to Sandy for the first van exchange point. I tend to get pre-race jitters pretty darn good and when my race time was late in the afternoon instead of first thing in the morning like it is for all of my other races, my stomach wouldn’t let me eat too much. Plus, it’s THAI. The spice? Not so much my friend. I asked for it as bland as bland could be.

After the three bites of noodles I had (with my team looking at me and asking, “Aren’t you hungry? You hardly ate anything!”), we piled back into Jason’s Yukon to head on out. My team in Van 2 consisted of me, Mike and Jason that I ran with last time, and three new people: Laura, Rick, and John.

We’re chatting, having a grand old time making the hour drive to Sandy when we get a phone call from Van 1. “We just sent out our last runner.” Rrrrrh! Music stops. “What did Kate just say?” I ask. Mike looks at me and says, “Holy s—, they just sent out their last runner!” And we were about 20 minutes away from where we needed to be. Those doggone son of a guns in Van 1 decided to kick out 7:15 pace times (the average age in that van was 23) which meant that our carefully plotted spreadsheet was way out of whack. And I started to get nervous.

“Ang, are you ready to go?” asked Jason, who started weaving in and out of traffic quite precariously.

“Umm, I really need to use the Honeybucket…like, a lot” I say nervously. Honeybucket lines are notoriously  long and my first leg was just about 6 miles. And I had been drinking like crazy to hydrate.

Thanks to some back roads manuevering by Jason, navigated by Laura, we got there with a few minutes to spare where I literally jumped in line for the Honeybucket, jumped out with Mike, headed up to the exchange and voila! There was Summer kicking her 16 year old legs hard into the chute. Slap! went the bright green bracelet on my wrist and whoosh! away I went.

I was pumped for this first leg. I was ready to take no prisoners and kick out a good pace. I figured I would be tired for my second leg which would take place sometime in the middle of the night, and then hopefully with some sleep I could hammer out another really good pace for my short 4 miler leg in the a.m. hours. Almost 3  miles into my run, my team came roaring up beside me with Jason yelling, “Whoo! Go, Angie baby, go! You’re on a 8:05 pace!” I pumped my right fist and thought “YES!” in my head. I was feeling good. But this exhileration was to be short lived. Halfway into my leg 7 route, the skies opened up and down came the rain. It felt good – for the first 5 minutes. And then it became a hazard. Cars were not slowing down so much and a couple of them splashed me. My leg consisted of several rolling hills and when coming up one hill, a car came blasting over the top much too close to the runners side of the road. I moved left quickly to avoid any potential mishap and then felt my footing slip.Yank! went my left leg off the side of the rolled asphalt and ouch! went my hamstring as I tried to adjust quickly and not roll my ankle. CRAP.

Thankfully, I was only about a mile away from the finish so I just pushed on through, although my gait was a bit encumbered by my freaking hammie. Luckly, Katie had provided me with some of her BioFreeze that became my saving grace. I kept spraying and stretching and rubbing that sucker out all night long and by the time it came to running my second leg, I was good to go.

After Van 2 finished our first legs, we headed over to Bridgeport in downtown Portland to eat. Oh my goodness, EAT THERE! It was so tasty yummy and I’m not just saying that because I was a starving runner at that point. We took showers back at Ronler Acres which was so nice because it wasn’t crowded! And you had your own separate stall. The benefits of being an Intel employee.

We started to make our way from RA up to Van Exchange #2, thinking that we would maybe have about an hour or hour and a half to sleep before Van 1 would get there. Yeah, no such luck. Dang kiddies ran their guts out again. Basically, I had time to stretch my legs a little, grab some quality Honeybucket time, and get to the exchange chute before here came Summer. Slap! The bracelet was on and I was off again.

Leg #19 is considered Very Hard. And when you are running it at 1:00 a.m. in the morning, and it’s misty, and freaky, and no lights, and hardly any people at all, and it goes UPHILL for most of the time, you are glad just to survive. It started lightly snowing on me at one point, but with the halo glow of the headlamp I had on my head, it made it look like little white bugs. And I thought I was inhaling them. I started gagging and spitting before I realized, ‘wait a minute – this is snow!’ You have to remember it was about 1:30 a.m. and I was running 6 miles again. My brain was in la-la-land. Oh, and my ipod died with about 2 miles to go. The HARDEST 2 miles of the whole dang leg – all uphill and winding. Sigh…so I sung to myself in my head and tried not to pay attention to the creepy noises in the woods all around me. Of course, that faint banjo music that started to grow louder did make me go faster…

After Van 2 was done with our second legs, we headed down to the final exchange. Until I told Jason to stop. Because apparently for the first time in my life I was suddenly car sick. Like, violently car sick. I jumped out of his Yukon so fast and started high tailing it down a little path to get away from the side  of the road because I didn’t want the silhouette of my bent over body puking my guts out to be illuminated for all to see. I came around a slight corner, saw a lady who had tried to hide and go the bathroom in private, quickly spat out a “I’m sorry—” and then blah! Goodbye any nutrients that had been in my stomach. That totally sucked. And I’m pretty sure that lady won’t forget it either. Ah well…

One of the memorable events in any HTC race is the group shower. Yes, you read that right, the GROUP shower. I’m not talking boys and girls here, I’m talking a high school shower situation where there are no stalls, a round of faucets stream out of the middle of a room, and you go and stand there with 5 other people closely around you trying to shower and not really look anybody in the eye. I don’t know how it is in the guy side but in the lady’s quarters, we had a major backup at the Jewell High School. I got in line right as 5 women grabbed the open shower heads and started to get clean. Within 2 minutes, 23 women were right behind me waiting their turn to shower as well. When a shower came open, you just had to walk right in, set down your toiletries, and have it—with roughly 23 pairs of eyes staring at you. Sheesh, like that wasn’t disconcerting at all! But it feels so good to be clean so it’s a necessity.

At Exchange #3 between Van 1 & Van 2, there was major traffic. As in backed up so far that runners were having to get out and run up another mile just to be able to be there when their exchange partner was coming in the chute. It was a MESS. Our Van #1 had a runner go down with a knee issue so they were delayed by over an hour in getting to us. Which meant that I was standing at the exchange point, shivering my ever living guts out, and waiting and waiting and waiting. They forgot to call and tell us that they would be slow. And during my one hour stint at the start of Leg #31, the skies decided to open up AGAIN which meant that I was completely soaked through by the time Summer got there. Did I

mention I was shivering? And my stomach was upset? And everyone in my van said I was as white as a sheet? Screw it. I was running and finishing up my legs NO MATTER WHAT. And I did. And I threw up by Superman as he came flying by me on this last leg. He gave me a high five and said, “Nice job!” because apparently he thought I was throwing up due to the fact that I was pushing myself so hard. Ha! Hardly, Man of Steel. Something in my stomach just wasn’t sitting right…

As I came around my last bend, I saw the exchange point where Mike was ready to take off and I just went into a full

out sprint. Forget that my stomach was screaming no, forget that my legs were crying no, I was finishing hard and strong and that was it. I gave him the bracelet, stopped running, and started to smile. Yes! I was DONE! Jason asked, “Did you hurl?” I nodded and said, “Oh yeah” and he exclaimed “Nice! Give me a high five!” Such a great team mate.

We finished in 28:06:59 which put us at 434th out of 1004 teams. Sweet! And all I could think when I got on the plane to fly home? ‘I can’t wait to do this again next year!’

Fourth Grade

He’s in fourth grade. FOURTH. No longer little kiddish. He’s upstairs, in the Big Kids hall. And so far he likes his teacher. But thankfully, because he’s such a good student, his teachers have always liked him (which I thought was very smart on their part).

He’s always played chase/tag at recess, boys pitted against the girls or vice versa depending on how you look at it. He looks older, taller, and entirely new in a that-isn’t-the-little-boy-I-used-to-sing-to-sleep-every-night kind of way. Is there some sort of time warp going on here I don’t know about? He gets older, grows and grows, and I just stay the same? (hey now…)

Fourth grade. Really? WOW.

This week? HTC!

I fly up to Oregon this week to do the Hood to Coast race again. And boy oh boy, I can’t wait! Although I am not entirely up to speed with my running thanks to my lovely knee (you should see the scar – wow), I am going to be a-okay. Because Red Bull works. And I get a break in between my legs. And my van mates are super cool people who are out to have fun albeit excellent runners as well. I am so excited for 28 hours of no sleeping again!!